It’s not that hard, Washington

Our opinion: Congress and the President can avoid indiscriminate, onerous budget cuts with a sensible alternative that avoids economic turmoil.

How fitting that sequestration succeeds the Oscars as the news of the week. It’s Washington at its most self-absorbed, roiling in the dramatics of a fiscal crisis of its own making, while the rest of America looks on, every spectator with an opinion of his or her own.

But while the Academy Awards ultimately have nothing to do with our everyday lives, if President Obama and Congress fail to come up with a more reasonable plan than sequestration, we’ll all find out just how relevant government is.

While it might be tempting, after so many dramas, to adopt a “so what” posture to the sequester, the reality is that most of us will feel it eventually. Yes, it will start with the tens of thousands of government employees and contractors who lose their jobs or take pay cuts through furloughs. But as some $85 billion or more a year in income evaporates from the marketplace and unemployment lines grow even longer than they already are, a still-hesitant economy will likely stall, if not reverse.

Not to mention the effects of actual program cuts. Consider the health effects — not to mention the moral failure — of fewer vaccinations for children. Or what fewer teachers now will mean down the road for the nation’s competitiveness. Or how much the economic recovery will be set back by adding yet more people to the ranks of the unemployed and cutting programs that help people find jobs. And on it goes.

Yes, the nation’s deficits are high, and so is its debt. Sequestration was the result of the failure of Congress and the President in 2011 to come up with a specific long-range plan to save money. Throwing up their hands, they devised a plan supposedly so reckless as to ensure it would never happen: mandatory, indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts of 8 percent to the military and 5 percent to other discretionary spending. A year and a half later, here they are, without a counterplan, and four days to go.

Yes, budget deficits in the trillions need to be reined in. Yes, a national debt that exceeds our gross domestic product is too large. But the middle of a weak economic recovery is not the time to do what the sequester would do.

What Congress and the President need to accomplish this week does not have to be complex. First, they need to acknowledge that the goal underlying the sequester — that money borrowed in 2011 had to be fully paid for through cuts in the budget — is not yet economically feasible.

Second, they should agree to cuts, both defense and domestic, that are more manageable and gradual — say, 1 to 2 percent annually over a period of five years. That would be a respectable down payment on the deficit.

Third, they need to make this a broad blueprint, and hand over the responsibility for coming up with the specific cuts to the executive branch, so that the people who actually run federal agencies can make cuts based on experience and knowledge of their operations. Having Congress micromanage the cuts will surely steer this straight down a political dead end.

We would offer a fourth condition — that Congress and the President finally hammer out an actual federal budget and come up with a simpler tax code that gives citizens and businesses alike the kind of certainty that helps an economy grow — but we might be mistaken for moving from drama to fantasy.

22 Responses

This is the result of 30 years of failed government foresight and planning. Makes one wonder why anyone would want this band of fools managing their health care. However, no matter what cuts are made someone will feel it. We need to suck it up. It’s called short term pain for long term gain. STOP KICKING THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD!!! The cost of government represents overhead cost on society. Like any good business, the government needs to reduce this burden. We can start by ending ALL Subsidies – Oil, Agriculture, Green Energy, and Big Bird included. yes we all have our favorite that we think should be funded – try this – SHARED SACRIFICE!

The signs of the impending economic collapse are here again. Rising fuel prices and rising food prices. The SS tax holiday expired and people are spending less. This administration foolishly allowed the entire 2% to go in all at once instead of phasing it back in over several years. Then there is the fear and unknowns concerning Obamacare. Already, employers are cutting back on health benefits and reducing the number of full time employees.

Obama was handed an economy that had tanked and was starting to rebound. He has been taking credit for the meager recovery. I hope he also takes credit for the impending crash as well.

And yes I truly believe this, I have moved all of my investments from Stocks into Bonds.

The problem with all this talk about compromise and “cost” savings is it never happens – every administration talks big about tax/entitlement/defense/immigration reforms but when either an R or D adminstration has the policial winds to really make a change they never do… This is their own doing!

The TU Editorial staff does realize that it is just a cut in the growth rate not an actual dollar cut. For example, the Dep’t of Transportation’s budget was $72.6B in fiscal 2012, it was projected to be $74.2B in fiscal 2013, but will be $73.2B with the sequester. That looks like actual growth to me. It is similar across the entire Federal Budget. Actual dollars spent do not decline, the spending just doesn’t grow as fast as previously projected. There are no cuts, just a lot of fear mongering by those who won’t get all the extra dollars over last year they thought they were getting.

Again a failure to report, The Sequestration was a device devised by the president and he alone owns it. BO got his tax hike earlier this year, and now it is his turn to identify the cuts. Let the Sequester roll and let BO choose all of the cuts. People will be getting up and going to work before during and after this Sequester and most will come to believe that the hyped hysteria that the president is pushing over the sequester is more of the crisis management this president “gins” up. Maybe they will finally see this president for the failed leader he is. Unless the media works up more apologies for BO or a way to blame conservatives for BO’s creation

How do you compromise with someone who believes that compromise means he gets all that he wants, and you get nothing?

We got Obama’s tax hikes on workers and the rich, and now it is time for the compromise, where we get spending cuts. Why won’t Obama offer up his own ideas on spending cuts? Why won’t he compromise?

Obama got his tax hikes, and now we get our spending cuts. If the only way to get those cuts is to allow Obama’s sequester to become effective, then that is because Obama has refused to offer alternative spending cuts.

Compromise for a change, Obama, now, or your legacy of high unemployment, record deficits, exploding debt, will become permanent.

These cuts are $85 Billion of a $4 trillion spending spree. This amounts to 2%. Coincidentally, we the working people gave up 2% of our spending with the loss of the SS tax holiday. The Government can also give up 2%.

“realist”, nice dance you did there. The same article states that Obama did reciprocate at which point Boehner balked as he realized he couldnt get his own party’s support.

The hold up… is squarely on the tea party driven segment of the Republican party. Complete refusal to budge. And Boehener put “jack” on the table. Allowing a temporary tax cut to expire is not putting anything on the table. What happened was the Republicans attempted to get something for nothing and it has backfired.

Smallball, after getting all the credits and any return you might get. How much are you really paying in? what percentage is that of your income?

Now, take that same math and apply it to pretty much any business/corporation. You will rapidly find that what has happened is that businesses have spent decades of lobbying etc shifting the tax burden onto you and I. What use to be 55% Corporate and 45% Indidvidual in the 40s had dwindeled to 10% Corporate and 90% individual.

To its credit, the TU’s editorial board has refrained from parroting the Obama Administration’s political spin that this is all the fault of evil Republicans.
Unfortunately, it has totally accepted the Administration’s position that we face a fiscal disaster just by merely reducing an increase in spending.

And it’s very unfortunate that readers must look at the comments rather than the editorial itself to learn important relevant facts regarding the size of the “cuts”, that the sequester was part of a larger compromise that included the tax increases that have already passed, that the sequester was Obama’s idea, and the fact that these really aren’t “cuts” at all but an attempt to increase spending by a smaller amount.

So let me do the math, If I make $20,000 a year but spend $40,000 a year on expenses and my credit card supplier says, sorry, we need to cut you down to $38,600. I am still spending too much, RIGHT? that is your government for you.

The way I see it is like this. Despite supposed great fiscal management, The town of Colonie is broke, the North Colonie School district is broke, Albany County is Absolutely Broke and the nursing home is taking us deeper every day. NY State at last look was broke, they get my guns and my money. and contrary to popular belief of the “progressives” and Mr. President, the federal gov’t is BROKE. so when do we stop the excessive spending and the redundant programming and all the so called, self proclaimed entitlements. WE ARE ALL BROKE. including me, who is paying my fair share of the bills.

Mr. Dunphy – with regards to #11 – are these statistics due to the rich getting richer or are they due to the government providing everything for people? Teach a person to fish they eat for a lifetime. Give a person a fish they at dinner and look for more fish.

Welfare Statistics
Total number of Americans on welfare 4,300,000
Total number of Americans on food stamps 46,700,000
Total number of Americans on unemployment insurance 5,600,000
Percent of the US population on welfare 4.1 %
Total government spending on welfare annually (not including food stamps or unemployment) $131.9 billion

That’s a childish way of looking at a negotiation, in which compromise is expected.

All the left has to do to see the folly of the “You get nothing, I get that for free” mind set is to pretend that the evil Republicans had done that to Obama. The wrongness of Obama’s attitude would be crystal clear to the left if Obama were receiving, rather than delivering, such childishness.

Why is it no one mentions the fact that the “cuts” will come out of an increase mandated by law? Ergo, there is no cut to the previous year’s budget, just a reduction in the increase these programs are mandated every year. Also, ask yourself why these “cuts” were set up to target specific high profile programs. Couldn’t they have been set up to target less important programs? Political posturing perhaps?

Imagine if you will that we have a Republican president. He (or she) proposes a bill that is then passed and signed into law – like the sequester. He even goes so far as to threaten to veto any attempt to change this law – like Obama did *before* the election. As the law is about to go into effect he then changes tactics, lies by blaming the Democrats for the idea, and travels around the country in full campaign mode stating categorically that this rather small reduction in an overall increase in spending is going to wreak havoc with the economy and hurt the children, the poor, women, etc – and this is an outcome desired by the Democrats. Finally, he states that as a result of this marginal change that illegal immigrants about to be deported will have to be released and that he will not be able to deploy a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf. Does anyone think that the TU would have written this editorial?

Readers don’t have to take my word for these facts. They come from Bob Woodward – the patron saint of modern journalism. Unlike most of his brethren in the media he takes the “journalist” part rather seriously, and does not view himself as a foot soldier in the partisan, political effort to support a Democratic president. He’s the one who has stated that Obama has lied regarding the origins of the sequester and he’s the one who has called Obama’s decision to not deploy that aircraft carrier “a kind of madness that I haven’t seen in a long time.”

The response by the Obama Administration? A warning from a “very senior person at the White House” to Woodward that “he’s going to regret doing this”.

This is how the President of the US conducts business and sadly this will probably be the only mention of these facts one reads in the Capital District’s major newspaper.

Obama does seem to be backing away, wisely, from his pronouncements of the impending doom to result from his sequestration plan. Imagine his horror, if he were to keep trying to instill fear of his sequestration, and if those fears were found to be lies… The political cost is just too high for him to do that, so, knowing that people will forget his apocolyptic visions of the post-sequestration world, he is wisely backing away from his false prophecies.

If this is the only way we can slow the growth of government spending, then sequestration is necessary. If only Obama hadn’t tried so vigorously to deny his fatherhood of the sequester.